General Manager - Women's Services & Neonates

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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. Delivery of safe, high quality patient care

In partnership with the clinical team, the General Manager will:

• Create an environment within the directorate that makes care, safety and patient satisfaction everyone's first concern. There will be an emphasis on learning from incidents, patient feedback and risk management systems to drive continuous service improvement and the reduction of risk.
• Ensure that high quality clinical services are delivered in line with the Trust's Quality Strategy and available financial resources.
• Be proactive and innovative in leading the development and implementation of the Patient Involvement strategy, ensuring there are mechanisms to seek feedback to help improve/develop services. The post-holder will listen and take action to address concerns identified through a range of tools including the annual patient survey, real time patient feedback systems, PALs and formal complaints, providing regular feedback to patients, parents and staff on action taken with training and support for staff where appropriate.
• Ensure patient environments are supportive of providing high quality patient care and lead in reducing anxiety.

2. Governance

In partnership with the clinical team, the General Manager will:

• Actively involve and lead directorate staff in the delivery of Clinical Governance, in accordance with Trust systems, processes and priorities. General Managers are expected to participate and lead service reviews (where appropriate) to ensure that care is delivered in line with best practice and actions are taken to ensure any system failures are addressed. The General Manager, Divisional Nurse/Midwife and Clinical Directors will work together to organise Directorate clinical governance half days and governance policy boards to ensure the monitoring of trends, dissemination of best practice and learning throughout the Directorate.
• Establish, maintain and oversee a system of internal control within the directorate that supports an integrated approach to governance. This will include responsibility for mitigating risks identified in the Assurance Framework, the Risk Register, the Incident Review Register, the annual directorate comprehensive risk assessment and any ad-hoc risk assessments. It will also include ensuring a comprehensive and robust mechanism across the Directorate for reporting on and learning from incidents and complaints that promotes a culture of openness and honesty.

• Ensure that directorate responsibilities with respect to external assessments e.g. Risk Management and the Care Quality Commission's Standards are fulfilled.
• The General Manager will support, in partnership with Divisional Nurse/Midwife, Clinical Directors to provide strong clinical leadership to facilitate a robust clinical and research governance culture within the directorate and at a corporate level. This will include the implementation and monitoring of national initiatives, such as NICE guidance and the implementation of the Trust's framework for clinical and non-clinical risk management, untoward incident management and Serious Alert Broadcasts.
• Together with the Divisional Nurse/Midwife and Clinical Directors, lead the management of complaints and learning from complaints and incidents. The post-holder will ensure that appropriate action is taken to address issues of concern and prevent recurrence of similar events. The post- holder will be required to communicate sensitive and often contentious information to patients, families and staff, including chairing Local Resolution Meetings.
• Ensure that all incident reviews led by the directorate are undertaken in a timely manner, resultant action plans completed to an agreed timetable with feedback regarding the progress made to the Clinical Governance Trust Executive and staff directly involved.

3. Operational planning and delivery

The General Manager will:

• Be responsible for the operational delivery of all services within their portfolio. These services may be across multiple sites within the Trust, and may also be across sites that are external to the Trust.
• Work closely with internal teams to devise systems proactively to manage service demands and ensure that these are fully implemented.
• Assist the Clinical Directors in chairing Directorate meetings and chair other relevant meetings.
• Initiate and oversee regular reviews of services, and ensure new developments are appropriately resourced through the business planning process.

• Monitor activity in relation to agreed activity plans and national access targets, and implement immediate corrective action in relation to any significant underperformance/ over performance.
• Respond at a senior level and in a timely fashion to frequent and unpredictable day-to-day operational issues as required. Liaise directly with patients and staff to resolve urgent concerns, including resolving stressful or distressing situations.

4. Performance management

The General Manager will:

• Oversee clinical services are delivered in line with required activity and income plans, maintaining control of expenditure, improving value for money and ensuring continued service development in relation to efficiency and quality. This will include implementation and monitoring of demand management initiatives agreed with commissioners.
• Be responsible for leading the development of the performance management framework and ensuring its implementation in order to deliver national and local performance targets within the directorate
• Developing and supporting service redesign and quality initiatives.
• Supporting corporate performance in relation to national and local targets in collaboration with colleagues across the Trust, advising and supporting the implementation of national standards for which responsibility does not lie solely within the Directorate.
• Taking appropriate action where the Directorate is not achieving its targets
• Take the lead with nominated clinicians for specific targets as appropriate and agreed with the Divisional Director, and being ultimately responsible for the delivery of Directorate-specific targets. Ensuring GIRFT standards of performance are delivered or improved.
• Be responsible for coordinating all service reviews and peer reviews relevant to services within the portfolio, both internal and external to the Trust, and be responsible for preparing and collating information and ensuring any identified actions are fully implemented. Take the lead in implementing service reviews where there are performance concerns or operational delivery challenges.
• Oversee that the Trust processes in relation contractual requirements e.g. demand management are fully adhered to.

• Oversee the monitoring of benchmarked performance against internal and external indicators including, but not exclusive to:
  • Corporate plan targets
  • Audit Commission/national performance review data o Benchmarked data sets - GIRFT etc
  • External and internal service reviews
• Advise the Trust on the appropriate clinical and activity information required effectively to manage performance within the Directorate

Person specification

Experience

Essential criteria

• Educated to degree level/equivalent
• Extensive senior management and leadership experience at a senior level in NHS / private healthcare

Desirable criteria

• Membership of Professional Body in health/ social care

Experience

Essential criteria

• Significant track record of senior level management experience gained in a complex acute hospital setting

Desirable criteria

• Project management experience

Skills and knowledge

Essential criteria

• Skills and knowledge

Important

• The closing date given is a guide only. There may be some occasions when we have to close a vacancy once sufficient applications have been received. You are therefore advised to submit your application as early as possible to avoid disappointment.
• Please check your emails regularly as this is how we will communicate with you throughout the recruitment process.
• If you have not heard from us within 3 weeks after the closing date, we regret that this usually means your application was not successful.
• In submitting an application, you authorise the Trust to confirm any previous NHS service details via the Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process, should you be appointed to the post.
• During the recruitment process your identity documentation (ie passport, driving licence, visa etc) will be scanned using a device which recognises UV, infrared and machine-readable zone security features of the documents provided.
• Employment at the Trust is offered subject to successful completion of a six month probationary period.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Documents to download

• GM JD (PDF, 1008.2KB)
• Functional Requirements (PDF, 390.8KB)
• Guidance for applicants (PDF, 85.4KB)
• Policy Statement (PDF, 144.5KB)
• Staff Benefits and Wellbeing (PDF, 196.5KB)
• Recruitment Pack (PDF, 2.8MB)